by Olivia Woods
Prologue
SEVEN DAYS AGO
The world receded behind an infinite vista of radiant white, until all that remained was the beating of his heart-the steady rhythm that kept him anchored to his life on the linear plane. He found his hand, long brown fingers flexing above his open palm, just as he had done during his original encounter with the Prophets. And like that first time, he came to understand that he was not alone.
But he had intuited from the start that this was not to be another meeting with the wormhole entities. His sudden need to experience the Orb that had guided him here had come from his vague sense of a different sort of connection, one deep in the center of his being…something that transcended even the most intimate relationships of his linear life. As his awareness continued to spread outward, he started to recognize those who were already assembled here: seven others who had, like him, been drawn by necessity to this place that was not a place, at a time when there was no time. He walked forward into a circle of Emissaries.
A gathering of men named Benjamin Sisko.
They looked at one another across the whiteness, men from different universes; each one, like him, born by design, and each of whom in time-despite how differently their lives had unfolded-had met his destiny on a world called Bajor.
Ben felt the void at once, a cold and yawning emptiness very close by, like a missing piece of his soul. To his immediate right, there was a break in the circle. Someone was missing.
“I take it,” he said, “that we’re here to do something about the hole in our ranks.”
“Not us,” said one of the others. “You.”
Ben’s gaze fixed upon the speaker, a clean-shaven civilian wearing the formal attire of a Federation diplomat, and as their identical eyes met, his counterpart’s life and the world from which he came were suddenly an open book: Ambassador Sisko of the UFP Diplomatic Corps, who had lost his wife Jennifer on Cardassia Prime during a suicide attack by Kohn-Ma terrorists, even as he was trying to negotiate the withdrawal of Cardassia’s military forces from Bajor….
Ben heard his heart beating faster. He focused on the sound, followed it back to his true self, realizing that it would be all too easy to become lost in the alternate lives arrayed around him. “I don’t understand.”
“He was your responsibility,” someone else said. Ben turned and focused past the break in the circle, where another counterpart was gesturing toward the vacant space between them. What appeared to be a dagger was sheathed in the sashlike belt of his gaudy metallic uniform: Fleet Captain Sisko, the military governor of Bajor under a Terran Empire that never fell, the livid scar across his right, sightless eye the only legacy of the father who had betrayed him. “It was your task to reach him, to convince him to take his place among us.”
“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. “I never even met our counterpart in that reality. How is anything about him or that universe my responsibility?”
“You ignored the signs,” the imperial said.
“What signs? Every crossover was their doing, except for the first one, and that was entirely by accident!” As he spoke, the events of that original contact came back to him: Nerys and Julian’s runabout mysteriously malfunctioning as it entered the wormhole, out of control until it emerged, inexplicably, in the alternate universe of the Intendant.
Then he paused, comprehension slowly dawning…along with the terrible realization that he had been blind to a pattern that had been there before him all along.
“It wasn’t an accident at all,” Ben said. “The Prophets wanted our two universes to connect.”
“You’re starting to understand,” said another civilian, this one full-bearded and wearing a blue laboratory jumpsuit: Dr. Sisko of the Daystrom Institute, whose discovery of the wormhole years after the terrible accident that had claimed the life of his sister had led, not to strife, but to a new renaissance of art, science, and philosophy-and to a spreading social revolution in which the free exchange of knowledge and ideas was catalyzing a gradual dismantling of the familiar galactic nation-states in favor of a loose but stable interstellar sprawl. “Every other crossover was initiated by their side, just as you said,” the scientist continued. “And more tellingly, they all occurred by transporter. But your Kira and Bashir’s runabout went through the wormhole to get there and back that first time, and you never stopped to consider the possibility that it wasn’t a random event, or that your two universes seemed unusually permeable in the Bajoran system after that first event. You never wondered why no one in that universe ever opened their Temple Gates, despite the presence of a Sisko in that continuum. Not even after you learned the truth about your origins…that Benjamin Sisko does not exist by accident, in any universe.”
“The Sisko of the Intendant’s dimension,” Ben realized. “He was supposed to have become their Emissary.”
“That’s the only reason any of us exist,” said still another counterpart, his uniform an odd amalgam of Starfleet and Militia design: Colonel Sisko of the Celestial Union-from the universe where Bajor was the nucleus of a vast planetary alliance that stretched from Cardassia to Earth-who had discovered the wormhole at the height of a savage and protracted war with the Tholians…a conflict that had claimed the lives of both his parents. “We’re each born onto a path we’re meant to walk,” the colonel continued, “but his life-his reality-made him the most reluctant of us, the one least open to accepting the role we’re all meant to fulfill.”
“Cowardice” was the judgment of Admiral Sisko, widower and hero of Wolf 359, whose Federation had long ago absorbed the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, even the Tzenkethi and the Breen. “The fear to believe in ourselves has always been our greatest enemy. That was where you came in.”
“You’re telling me I was supposed to have gotten through to him somehow.”
“Not alone,” said Sisko of the Borg, his mechanically aided voice reverberating as it passed through his dull gray lips. “Never alone. But it was your job to keep your eye on the ball.” Ben repressed a shudder at seeing the fate he knew he himself had only narrowly escaped. But his revulsion was tempered by fascination-that in a universe where the collective had overrun Earth and then pushed on through the Federation toward Bajor, the Prophets’ plan for Benjamin Sisko had still come to fruition, even for one so wounded in body, mind, and soul.
“But why me?” Ben wanted to know. “You all seem to have understood my task when I didn’t even know I had one. Why wasn’t it one of you?”
“Because next to him, you were the slowest of us to accept who you really are,” came the answer from the Sisko whose life seemed most like his own…until the death of his only son aboard the Saratoga, a loss from which he never recovered. Broken and consumed by grief, it destroyed his marriage, his career, and almost his will to live. But time and destiny eventually swept him to Bajor, and thus to the truth, as they had for every other Emissary. “Helping him would have helped you to reach a better understanding of yourself much sooner, to think outside your comfort zone, so you could have better prepared your Bajor for the trials ahead.”
And there it was-as it had been during the throes of the rapture that had led to his rediscovery of B’hala, and again during his tutelage in the Temple-a fleeting glimpse of the pattern that held the Tapestry together, spanning past, present, and future…now coupled with the real possibility that he himself was responsible, because of actions he had failed to take, for putting it all at risk.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“Our most immediate concern,” the admiral said, “is that the deserter’s continuum is now vulnerable t
o the threat from your side.”
“What threat?”
“You’ll know soon,” said the scientist. “Events are proceeding quickly in both realities.”
“The damage may already be too great for the outcome we’re hoping for,” warned the imperial.
“If the circle isn’t complete, the Tapestry will unravel,” the colonel countered. “That musn’t happen.”
“What must I do?” Ben asked.
And they told him.
“Are you all right?” Opaka Sulan asked after she had closed the Orb casket.
Ben nodded, but it was mostly reflex. The truth was, he was overcome with a profound sense of loss. Some of his previous experiences with the Tears had left him feeling either exhilarated or drained, physically and emotionally. But this was something else, something more disturbing; this time in the Orb’s embrace he’d felt whole in a way he’d never experienced before, a near completeness that, in its aftermath, lingered only as an echo-a memory that was now painful to recall, because it reinforced his utter isolation on the linear plane.
“Drink this.” Opaka held out a goblet of water she’d poured from the decanter that rested on a narrow table by the door. “It will help.”
Ben accepted the water gratefully. He drank it in one shot, savoring the cooling sensation in his gut. He looked around the room for some indication of how long he’d been in the Orb fugue, but of course there was no sign. The underground crypts that had been created to conceal the Tears until they could be safely returned to their shrines were windowless and offered no hint of the passage of time.
“The candles,” Opaka said, taking back the empty goblet. At first Ben didn’t understand what she meant, but then he realized she had read the question in his face and was offering him a clue to the answer. Now that he focused on them, he saw that the candles in the room were noticeably shorter than they were when the former kai of Bajor had led him to this place.
“Have I been here all afternoon?” he asked.
“Nearly so,” Opaka confirmed. “As you’ve no doubt realized by now, the Orb of Souls can be taxing-far more so than any of the other Tears. It is the least understood of the Nine, and the most unsettling. Encounters with it are exceedingly rare, for few meet its gaze willingly; even those who are called to it, as you were.” She paused, studying his face. “Did you find what you sought?”
Ben didn’t answer immediately. Opaka, of course, knew better than to ask him specifics-Orb encounters were considered too personal to share, requiring each seeker to decode them as best he could. This one, however, had far less ambiguity about it than his previous experiences.
Finally he told her, “I learned what I needed to know. I’m just not sure I can do what’s being asked of me.”
The stout woman lowered her eyes. Her lips curled slightly upward, but she offered no comment.
“What?” Sisko asked. “No sage words of advice to trust my own judgment, to walk the path that’s been laid out for me?”
She looked at him, arching an eyebrow. “When have you ever known me to tell you what you already know?”
“Then how about telling me what I don’t know?”
Opaka regarded him a moment longer, concern knotting her brow. Then she reached up and grasped his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. She closed her eyes. “Breathe,” she told him, the way she had when they’d first met. “Breathe…”
Ben blew air out his nostrils, then took it back in slowly. He waited, still fascinated even after all these years by the ability some Bajorans possessed to read each other’s inner state, a sensitivity that extended even outside their species. Jadzia had once speculated it was simply a limited form of “touch-empathy.” Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe.
Opaka opened her eyes and released him. “It’s all right to be afraid,” she said quietly.
“I’m not afraid,” he assured her.
“Not for yourself, no. But you’re deeply concerned about the consequences of the choices you must make.”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived with that concern my entire adult life.”
“But not like this.”
Ben exhaled and glanced at the ark of the Orb of Souls. “No, not like this.” He looked back at his old friend, grateful she was here with him. There were very few people in his life who had any real understanding of the burden he bore as the so-called Emissary of the Prophets, and none more so than Opaka, who eight years ago had started him on this strange journey of self-discovery and daunting responsibility. “There’s something I need to ask you,” he said.
Opaka waited.
“What can you tell me about the Sidau Orb fragment?” When she failed to reply immediately, Ben said, “I saw the look on your face when Lieutenant Ro first told us about it, two months ago. You know something. What?”
Opaka sighed. “What I ‘know’ may provoke more questions than it answers,” she said at last. “I first heard about it long ago, in connection with a much-revered kai from many hundreds of years past, Dava Nikende. He supposedly kept an object that fits the description Ro Laren gave us: a single, tiny green stone set in an ornate golden bracelet, which Kai Dava wore around the palm of his hand until he died. The Vedek Assembly has always considered the story apocryphal; it was never anything more than a folktale-an unlikely rumor, at best.” Sadness seemed to overtake her. “At least it had been, before the Sidau massacre.” She paused to wipe the tears forming in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said softly.
Opaka took a deep breath and regained her composure, but her mournful countenance remained. “Since then, I have been searching the Vedek Assembly archives for some forgotten insight into the artifact’s origins…or its fate.”
“And?”
“I’ve told you that an encounter with the Orb of Souls is a rare event. Kai Dava was one of the few people known to have been called to it. Archival references to that encounter only slightly predate the earliest mention of the object he supposedly carried…the Paghvaram.”
“‘Soul key,’” Sisko translated and turned his head toward the Tear’s ark. “Then the fragment is from the Orb of Souls. Dava must have-“
“No,” Opaka said gently. “Not unless our understanding of Dava Nikende is so flawed as to be complete fallacy. He revered the Tears. He even foresaw the need to conceal the Orb of Prophecy and Change, centuries before the occupation, so that it would be safe from the Cardassians and here to receive you when you came to us. For him to damage a Tear would be unthinkable…and none of them bear the evidence of such a crime.”
“Then what is this thing that three hundred people died for?”
“I wish I knew,” Opaka whispered.
“Emissary?”
Ben and Opaka both turned. Yandu Jezahl, the tall, dark-haired theologian who had been placed in charge of the crypt, stood in the doorway, her expression grave. “What is it, Vedek?” Ben asked.
“Forgive the intrusion, but we’ve received a communication from your wife,” Yandu said. “She said it was most urgent that she speak with you. She seemed quite distressed.”
Oh, no.
“We’ve routed the call to a companel on this level. If you’ll follow me…”
Ben’s first thought was that something had happened to the baby. But when Kasidy appeared on the comm screen with Rebecca sleeping peacefully against her chest, that initial dread dissipated quickly. The anxious look on Kas’s face, however, gave rise to new fears. “Kas, what’s happened?”
“I just heard from Ezri,” she told him. “Something’s gone wrong aboard the station. That Jem’Hadar that’s been living up there-he attacked Nerys and Lieutenant Ro, Ben. They’re both badly injured.”
Taran’atar? “Have they contained him?” Ben asked.
Kasidy shook her head. “Ezri said he fled the station. Commander Vaughn went after him in the Defiant.”
Damn. “Kasidy…I have to-“
“I know what you have to do. Call us when you have news.”
>
“Are you sure? You and Rebecca-“
“We’ll be fine,” Kasidy assured him. “Nerys needs you more than we do right now.”
“I love you.”
“We love you too.”
He waited until he was certain that Kasidy had cut the connection, and then he released the anguish building inside him, pounding his fist once against the panel.
A hand touched his shoulder. Warm. Strong. Reassuring. He looked into Opaka’s face and she offered him a slight, encouraging nod, urging him to go.
Ben took a deep breath and started marching toward the long stone stairway that led back to the surface.
1
“M y name is Iliana Ghemor,” the Cardassian woman said. “I’m a former agent of the Obsidian Order, the intelligence arm of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, in what to you is an alternate universe. Now I’m part of the rebellion organized by the Terrans of my continuum, whose objective is to overthrow the Alliance and live free of tyranny. My assignment was to assassinate the Intendant of Bajor, Kira Nerys. I aborted that mission when I learned of a plot that involved individuals from your side. I crossed over to stop it.”
“What was the nature of this plot?”
“To replace her with someone even worse.”
“Who?”
The Cardassian’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t very good at this, are you?”
“Who was planning to replace the Intendant?”
“You’re not really an interrogator. Your technique is terrible.”
“This isn’t an interrogation. I’m just here to ask some questions.”
“Whatever you want to call it, we don’t have time for this. You have to let me speak to your captain.”
“I’ll look into that. Who was planning to replace the Intendant?”
The Cardassian sighed. “Your reality’s version of me. My counterpart. Years ago, she was surgically altered to replace your Kira. I believe she has already crossed into my universe, killed the Intendant, and taken her place.”
“If that’s the case, why are you still in this universe?”
